“Handsome betas are polluting the gene pool with pigwoman blood,” and other observations on love and life from Chateau Heartiste

Today, a GUEST POST from Catherine! Thanks, Catherine! And the rest of you, enjoy!

Over on Chateau Heartiste, the (He)artist(e) Formerly Known As Roissy devoted a recent post to the conundrum of handsome men coupled with ugly women. It’s essentially an open thread for the denigration of women who don’t live up to Roissy’s porntastic standards (17 to 20 years old with a BMI of about 18 *and* a D cup, and related WTF?! attributes), as well as ragging on those awful beta manginas who are punching below their weight – or, to quote Heartiste himself, are “polluting the gene pool with pigwoman blood.”

I was participating in a mobile conference which included question and answer periods, and I noticed an odd couple standing to my side. He was youngish and good-looking — most women would agree on his physical attractiveness — and his wife was a snout-nosed, inbred-looking, stringy-haired, big fat pig dressed in sweatshirt and ill-fitting jeans. In other words, the typical American woman. I assumed they were married because I saw their rings and she had her hand on a stroller with an infant tucked away in it.

He’s just getting started.

What abomination is this! I thought. But then the reason became crystal clear after only a few moments watching and listening to them interact.

Speaker: Any questions?

Big Fat Pig: [nudging her hubby with her elbow] Honey, remember…

Handsome Husbandry: [tentatively raising his index and middle finger, and haltingly talking] I have a question… I have a…

So obviously the young good-looking man is totally under the thumb of the big fat evil feminist woman, who has sucked out his brains and reduced him to a quivering lump of hesitation and uncertainty!

As he asked his question, he kept looking over at his wife — in fact, staring at his wife more than the speaker, although he was ostensibly addressing the speaker. One would be forgiven for having the impression that he was seeking constant real-time assurance from his wife that his question was acceptable for public discourse. Nervously shifting from one foot to the other, leaning into his wife, gazing downward when the speaker responded to him, his body language was so beta it was painful to watch. No, it was repulsive to behold, almost as repulsive as the visual effrontery of his wife’s blubbery carcass.

So, sniveling, indecisive beta manginas are repulsive… but not as repulsive as a corpulent woman! Gotcha, Roissy.

After getting in a few more digs at the contemptuous, unsympathetic wife, Roissy sets forth his views on various types of couples. First, the kinds of couples that should be allowed to exist:

Handsome man with beautiful woman

All is right in the world. You infer the man has alpha characteristics to complement his good looks, and he has cashed that in for a hot babe. …

Ugly man with ugly woman

All is right, if depressing, in the world. You infer the ugly man has beta or even omega characteristics, and that an ugly woman was the best he could do. You assume the ugly woman resents him for having to settle, but knows she has no other options. Love between them is less about passion than it is about task delegation and avoidance of suicidal loneliness.

All is well in the world of alpha males with hot babes, but those in ugly people combos need to find some highly diverting hobbies to keep from offing themselves.

Now Roissy turns his attention to two apparent mismatches, and delineates his usual double standards:

Ugly man with beautiful woman

Wow, he is shooting out of his league! But then, thinking on it a bit, you recall that you saw quite a few couples like this mismatched pair during the week. It’s less rare than popularly imagined. You may ask yourself “What does she see in him?”, and from that you infer the ugly man has compensating alpha attributes to snag such a hottie — maybe he’s wealthy, or slick, or funny, or a dominating asshole, or some combination of each. You assume this ugly man has options to be able to choose a beauty for a girlfriend.

Moral: ugly men are permitted to have counter-balancing attributes! Can you guess what is coming next?

Handsome man with ugly woman

Whoa, what is he thinking?! An uncommon sight, (occurrence less frequent than its polar opposite), you presume the handsome man has some debilitating personality flaw — maybe social awkwardness, or shyness, or micropenis — that prevents him from fornicating with his true potential. Unlike the mirror image couple of the ugly man with the beautiful woman, you do not give the ugly woman the benefit of the doubt in assessing why she was able to catch a handsome man. You simply conclude, reasonably, that the handsome man is not the alpha male on the inside that he looks like on the outside, and therefore the ugly woman is not really dating out of her league. There must be something wrong with him, you think.

Women have no value beyond their looks, so the pitiful man dating someone wretchedly below Roissy’s artificial standards must likewise be sub-standard, in some way invisible to us, to have abased himself so humiliatingly.

Having drawn these pictures, Roissy rounds out the post with a sermon on female ugliness, which is to be universally shunned:

There is an instinctive, deeply primitive understanding chugging away behind the prefrontal cortex in every one of us that women sexually respond to a suite of male attractiveness traits, of which looks are only one desirable male quality. It is therefore not inconceivable to most non-brainwashed observers that an ugly man might have other characteristics that appeal to a beautiful woman on his arms, or that a handsome man might be crippled with weakness and self-doubt that constrains his ability to attract no better than a big fat pigwoman.

And we’re back to the disparaging references to pigs. Why, oh why does Roissy hate pork so? (That he detests women is more or less expected.)

In the mismatched couple I witnessed, it was clear that whatever good will or tokens of desire that the handsome man had inspired in his pigwoman were completely squandered by his beta behavior. It was easy to see by her loathsome demeanor that his looks no longer held — if they ever did beyond the first couple of dates — any sway over her feelings for him. But being the big fat pigwoman she is, she knew she could not do better.

And that is why the generational increase in human beauty is a slow, painstaking process, punctuated by tragic reversals to a sloping brow norm (see: Appalachia, Detroit). Handsome betas are polluting the gene pool with pigwoman blood.

What the hell was that? I’ll quote it again: “Handsome betas are polluting the gene pool with pigwoman blood.” Oh, the huge manatee! Shrink in terror from the impending doom to be brought about by porcine-human hybrids!

Naturally such hyperbole is a cue for some predictable misogyny in the comments, such as the following from regular tool Tyrone:

That’s why its good to be older to get a good sense for how a woman will age. There are loads of women who look hot when young but turn into cattle as they age. Mom is usually a good bench mark. If you’d do her Mom, you’re probably safe. Check out how Ginger Lynn looks like nowadays. You’d never recognize her from her porn days.

A view right in line with Roissy’s famed dating value regimen that women lose value once they’re older than, say, 29; and Tyrone follows it up with some white supremacism:

White people won’t survive without more kids. Smart white men need to breed more in our country- with white women.

What, you might ask, about women with great bodies but unappealing faces? One Anonymous coward urges his brethren to go for it :

[O]ne of my biggest regrets was not doing a girl who had the hottest body around but an ugly face. Temporarily of course.

But for fuck’s sake don’t marry them. Right, tenderman100?

Some years ago, before I was married for the first time (twice married, twice divorced) I was banging this babe. Amazing body. Amazing tits. But a kind of a bucktoothed face. When I first met her, I thought, wow what amazing tits…yeah she’s kinda ugly but she’s friendly and I just have to see those tat tas. Well, not only did I see them, we banged for a few months. She was incredible in bed, highly orgasmic, very flexible (did ballet). Haven’t seen her in decades, but if she is a fat cow, I wouldn’t be surprised. Yeah, she was ugly but she pounded like a pro. So it isn’t always what it seems. Then again, I would never have married her.

If not marriage, then what about a long-term relationship? Over again to Tyrone:

A good woman who has reparable shortcomings is still a good option for an LTR. Fugly is a whole different animal.

But if you marry one of them, Tyrone adds, make sure you have a contingency plan!

My wife knows if she ever lets herself go, talks about divorce, whatever that pisses me off enough to leave, I will simply disappear into the night. No arguments or emotions, it will be a complete coup de main. There won’t be anyone around to serve papers to. I’ll be overseas in an undisclosed location screwing LBFMs.

In case you don’t already know, LBFM is short for Little Brown Fucking Machines, a term of art to refer to Asian women (frequently underage) sought out by sex tourists — which should be sufficient to outline Tyrone’s sophisticated moral principles. He continues:

I say this with no emotion or bravado, just let her know its a fact that she must deal with. Marriage is like defense policy, the best defense is a good offense. Strike first, strike to kill. Identify a location and buy yourself some property there, so you have somewhere to go. Move enough money there to live well until you can start a bar or whatever to live. Plan this for a few years in advance if need be. Life is too short to be some stupid broad’s wage slave.

His essays are funny and all that, but I prefer his fiction. I feel like he’s one of the few authors with something to say. Infinite Jest really is a masterpiece. I finally finished it about eighteen months ago, after a myriad of failed attempts in high school. In its own way, it’s harder than Gravity’s Rainbow.

Yeah, I … feel otherwise, I guess. He was one of my favorites, until I realized that the only reason I really liked him was that he was difficult and I could feel a little pretentious talking about him. But try Vollmann, if you haven’t. He’s from the same kinda tribe, and I think you’d like him. Maybe not, but I try to spread the word.

I disagree that he’s difficult for the sake of being difficult, I’m not interested in that, but I find it to be justified. Plus, even if he does have word diarrhea from time to time, he’s hard in a sort of puzzle-y, fun, funny way. It’s not just needless obfuscation, it’s enjoyable. Kind of like Pynchon.

And he’s not always super difficult, that’s just his novels. Brief Interviews and Girl with Curious Hair are easier, and more accessibly funny.

Yeah, I … didn’t actually say that. I read BIWHM, Infinite Jest, The Girl with Curious Hair, and Broom of the System. (I actually didn’t love the last two, even at the time. They were a little clanky to me.) I still fell out of love with him, as a fiction writer, and still strongly recommend Vollmann. That is all.

MRAL (or anyone else), have you read “The Pale King” and if so what did you think?

I like DFW a lot but sometimes I want to punch him in the neck. I could write forever on why that is, but I’m going to hold back for now. I have the weirdest emotional/intellectual love/hate relationship with his work.

Against the Day was… not a classic, I think we can safely say. A fine book, but not anywhere close to his best. The same can be said for Inherent Vice, and Vineland, well, we all know how that was received. (Personally, I still really enjoyed it, but after GR… I get the disappointment).

I disagree even early Pynchon tops Wallace unambiguously. Infinite Jest and GR… I’d have to think about it. Okay, I’d probably go with GR, but still, IJ is an amazing piece of writing.

Lot 49, frankly, I think is overrated. It’s a great little book, but everyone goes crazy over it and I really don’t think it covers anything that V. didn’t. Even Pynchon himself thinks 49 is overrated (see the introduction to Slow Learner).

I actually finished The Pale King on Christmas Day. It was clearly unfinished- not just plotwise (which matters less with Wallace) but thematically (which is important). It was a little shallow in places. But of course, again… it’s an unfinished work. Lightyears away from Infinite Jest, but still a fun read.

I just want to say that people support me and my reading tastes in email.

Actually, no, but I just had a long conversation with the boyfriend about why we used to love Wallace-the-fiction-writer in our 20s and now have cooled on that, ending in a shared musing about how we don’t hang in circles anymore where we can impress people with what we’re reading. Kinda sad, actually. Even in law school. Especially in law school! Philistines, all!

I do agree that Wallace has unfortunately caught on with a certain segment of the hipster douchebags. That’s no reason to think less of his writing itself, though, I mean hipsters like Arrested Development too, and that’s still legit great television.

I actually finished The Pale King on Christmas Day. It was clearly unfinished- not just plotwise (which matters less with Wallace) but thematically (which is important). It was a little shallow in places. But of course, again… it’s an unfinished work. Lightyears away from Infinite Jest, but still a fun read.

Yeah, it was really obviously and clearly unfinished in both of the ways you pointed out. Thematically though, I thought it was more interesting than IJ, or had the potential to be as a completed book. I saw it as a more mature project on DFW’s part– how do you cope with the extremely mundane aspects of living? how do you come to terms with the mediocre lot you’ve been given? I thought it was also more explicitly political than his other works & that the political questions were extremely timely (i.e. the whole thing about running the IRS as a corporate entity or as a civil service organization); I was happy to see DFW finally engaging with concrete ethical questions on a large scale rather than questions of personal individual ethics or large-scale abstract philosophical things.

But yeah, I’d agree that it was sort of shallow in places. I have to say I did not like the whatsherface-subplot. Toni? I felt he really missed the boat on a lot of issues about class, gender, abuse, etc. there and was only using it for shock value. Not necessarily lowbrow shock value a la Howard Stern or whatever, but as a cheap way of giving us a kick in the emotional pants. (I also had that problem w/r/t IJ as well– I felt like he just didn’t “get” the lives of his lower class characters with maybe the exception of Don Gately, and was using displaying the horrors of their lives as a substitute for genuine understanding.) I also think the project of Pale King ends up being partly a fetishization of Protestant work ethic– the whole coping with life as an adult thing amounts to sucking it up and gritting your teeth through having a miserable life for duty’s sake or whatever– and I find that extremely problematic. I think he was led to that “solution” to life’s woes for personal reasons, but it doesn’t make it universally applicable. Which is my other problem with his work, and Pale King in particular: I think he had a problem separating his diagnosis of what’s wrong with modern US life from his personal issues with depression.

@ Kathleen and Sharculese – The only reason anyone should be calling themselves an “alpha” is if they have furry ears.

Meanwhile, going down the interacting-with-dogs derail, I apparently naturally project alpha behavior, as dogs usually approach me in that I-am-acknowledging-your-dominance way. There’s a dude locally who keeps Malamutes who wants me to adopt one of his. First time I met the dog it tried to jump up at me, I went “hey!”, and it immediately stopped and settled happily at my feet to be petted. Same thing happened with my friend’s lovely but really not very well trained pit bull. So apparently I’m a super-alpha, all 5ft2 of me? Because this kind of thing happens a lot with dogs.

It always baffles me that these clowns insist on invoking that particular metaphor and yet they never seem to understand what the concept “alpha” actually involves. You can’t just decide that you are one, it doesn’t work that way. And if you’re not willing to work and fight to protect your loved ones? You’re not an alpha. Leadership entails responsibility too, not just the privilege to fuck who you want.

Also, we are not part of the same family tree as dogs, wolves, etc. There’s that too. If they must invoke animal metaphors can’t they at least use another ape?

Oh, it’s not that I don’t like his fiction because it’s popular, it’s just that there came a point in my life when I realized that I didn’t really enjoy his writing and although I thought (and still think) some of his ideas were really interesting, I didn’t think the writing held together in a way that was interesting enough for me, and I then realized that the reason I had wanted to like it in the first place was because it was difficult and I could sound pretentious talking about it, which was important for me at the time. But then, there are actually a lot of fiction writers who are very Important and Big and Muscular and all that who I find generally uninteresting.

I should point out that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with your taste for liking his long fiction, Mr. Al. Just saying that I realized that I like his essays much better.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.